A project which included home intervention, a school-based support group, and a community component successfully trained parents of children with learning and behavior problems. The project's ecological impact on parent, teacher, and student perceptions of each other, as well as on student achievement, attendance, and self-concept measures, is…

A meta-analysis of findings from 24 controlled evaluations showed computer-assisted instruction (CAI) usually has positive effects on adult learners, i.e., it raised examination scores and reduced instruction time. Reliable conclusions could not be reached on CAI's long-term cognitive effects because of small number of studies investigating such…

Reports a study of 208 migrant children, three to four years of age and mostly Black, assessing school achievement and seven affective characteristics, i.e., delay of gratification, relationship with achievement model, dependency, motor inhibition, self-control, self-concept, and risk-taking. Suggests that findings of sex differences for…

Described are the results of a four-year action research project that investigated the reasons for girls' underachievement in science and technology and tested teacher-developed change strategies. Boys participating continued to be much more interested in science than the girls. Changes in option choice behavior were very small for both sexes. (RM)

Learning processes, as measured by the Approaches to Studying Inventory, contributed to the prediction of freshman grades of 181 Australians. Other measures, such as college entrance examinations, locus of control, and student background characteristics, had less predictive ability. (GDC)

Declaring that a "national emergency" exists in American education, the author outlines "Action for Excellence" recommendations developed by the Task Force on Education for Economic Growth, of which he was chairman, and discusses accomplishments in educational reform in the state of North Carolina, where he is governor. (JBM)

Statistical methods employed by Alexander and Pallas do not negate the differences between public and private school students' achievement. Instead, their work supports the conclusion that Catholic schools help average students achieve by increasing the likelihood of their enrollment in the academic track and by enhancing their performance in the…

The central message of this report is that while some students drop out because of significant academic challenges, most dropouts are students who could have, and believe they could have, succeeded in school. This survey of young people who left high school without graduating suggests that, despite career aspirations that require education beyond…

Incidents of violence in recent years have intensified concern about student conduct in our nation's schools, and have heightened the desire, among educators and others, to find ways of ameliorating the problem. Social science can play a supportive role, by providing insight into the origins of deviance in schools. However, while previous…

The primary goal of the American Federation of Teachers' (AFT) Redesigning Schools to Raise Achievement (RSRA) project is to build capacity at the state, district, school, and classroom levels to improve student achievement to meet the goals of the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act. This checklist highlights some of the opportunities and support…

This document describes the content and format of the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) measurements for reading comprehension of students in grades 4, 8, and 12. According to the framework, NAEP assesses three contexts for reading: reading for literary experience, reading for information, and reading to perform a task). In addition…

From the perspective of the field of adult literacy, the year 1999 is best seen not as the penultimate year of the millennium but as the year bookended by the reauthorization of the National Literacy Act in late 1998 and the National Literacy Summit of early 2000. Both of those events represent a huge milestone, and 1999 may be regarded as the…

Teachers make the greatest impact on students--what they learn, how they learn it, and what they do with it. Decades of research clearly demonstrate that a quality teacher, more than any other factor, enables students to overcome obstacles to learning like poverty and can even erase the achievement gap. The problem is that many teachers lack the…

Every teacher knows about barriers to learning and teaching that interferes with student progress and academic achievement. These barriers to learning can hamper a student's ability to participate effectively and benefit fully from classroom instruction and other educational activities. For school improvement efforts to succeed in ways that truly…

Barriers to learning and teaching interfere with students' ability to participate effectively and benefit fully from classroom instruction and other educational activities. For school improvement efforts to succeed in ways that truly improve student achievement and student test scores, systemic changes must be made in how schools provide learning…